FORT PIERCE FOLKS
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ANTHONY INSWASTY PHOTOS
Jackie Schindehette, a local artist who studied with A.E. “Bean” Backus at the start of her career, specializes in painting Florida landscapes and birds. She
paints on an easel that her husband, Harry Schindehette, created, basing its design on the old wooden easels Backus used in his Avenue C studio.
BY ELLEN GILLETTE
In 1980, Jackie Schindehette was a homemaker in Fort
Pierce who had never picked up a brush or palette
knife. She never planned to. Until one special day.
Born and raised in Miami, Schindehette sometimes
asked her father to help her illustrate reports for school.
Only recently did she discover that he had illustrated his
high school yearbook.
“It hadn’t clicked before that he had real talent,” she says.
In high school and college, Schindehette’s talent had
nothing to do with canvases or tubes of paint. She and her
brother danced together professionally. She also won several
beauty pageants.
At the University of Florida, she came in second in the
Miss Military Ball contest but won first place in the heart
of Army ROTC student leader Harry Schindehette. They
married in June 1967 and moved to Georgia where Harry
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The ARTIST